


Opposite Shores of the Light

by darlingred1



Series: Red [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femdom, Human Furniture, Naked Male Clothed Female, Pegging, Strap-Ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 11:12:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14400954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingred1/pseuds/darlingred1
Summary: Standing in the doorway, looking at them like this, Natasha understood for the first time the degree to which she’d carved out two separate parts of her life when she’d begun associating with Loki. Now the scraps were being stitched together into some sort of Frankensteinian monster.She hoped this didn’t turn out like Frankenstein’s monster.





	Opposite Shores of the Light

“Did you _break in_?” said Natasha, when she walked into her Chelsea apartment to find Steve Rogers sitting at the circular, two-person kitchen table.

The scent of coffee was faded but still hung in the air, and he had a mug of it in front of him—with a folded paper towel under it acting as a coaster, she noticed fondly.

“Picked the lock, yeah.” He shrugged and cast her a sideways glance. “I learned from the best, you know.”

They shared a smile, and the warmth she felt was a welcome surprise. She’d been…not worried, exactly, but on edge, tense. Every time she’d seen Steve over the last few years, he’d been more and more different. A little more world-weary, more darkness hovering in the fringes, his beard growing ever fuller.

He wasn’t the same Steve she’d given a lighthearted crash course on lock-picking all that time ago, but neither was he so far changed that he was a stranger.

Then Steve’s eyes flickered over her shoulder, his smile dimmed, and Natasha remembered why they were here.

“Dear me,” Loki said, putting a hand on his chest for a moment as though he was shocked beyond all measure. “Have you _all_ let yourself go since I last saw you?”

As Natasha sighed, Steve stood and seemed to fill the room. Objectively, Loki was taller—or maybe that was his barely heeled dress shoes combined with some illusion cast by that black suit—but Steve somehow managed to dwarf him despite that. It was the muscles, maybe, the fact that Steve immediately crossed his arms, drawing attention to his biceps.

Whatever it was, Loki appeared to feel it too, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin as though to say he wouldn’t be intimidated.

“Loki,” said Steve.

“Captain,” Loki answered. His tone was neutral, but his eyes were glittering in a way that dialed Natasha’s tension up a notch. If he felt like some wild animal who’d been caged and cornered, this could get ugly.

“We’ve all changed,” Steve said, “if that’s what you mean. What about you?”

Loki’s smile was thin and unkind. “If whatever ‘change’ you refer to means to grow facial hair or color my hair an unflattering shade, I’m sorry to say I’ve no interest in it.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, well used to this by now, but Steve frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with Nat’s hair,” he said.

That he was offended on her behalf, even over something so trivial as hair color, made her smile. She stepped farther into the kitchen and patted Steve’s arm as she passed. “Thanks, Steve.”

She started at the far end of the room, near the fridge, sweeping for any surveillance equipment that might’ve shown up since she was last here.

“I already checked,” Steve said. “The place is clean.”

She cocked an eyebrow, telling him silently what she thought of taking someone else’s word on that, and then she returned to her task.

He was right, though. She found nothing in the entire apartment. The security of the place had already been compromised during Loki’s first visit here, of course—which was why she’d suggested bringing him here again—but at least no one else had found their way here who hadn’t been invited or didn’t have some magical means of location.

When she finished, she returned to the kitchen to find that Steve had taken his coffee to the counter beside the sink, which he was leaning back against. His arms were folded as he faced Loki, who’d helped himself to Steve’s seat at the table.

Standing in the doorway, looking at them like this, Natasha understood for the first time the degree to which she’d carved out two separate parts of her life when she’d begun associating with Loki. Now the scraps were being stitched together into some sort of Frankensteinian monster.

She hoped this didn’t turn out like Frankenstein’s monster.

“You got here fast,” she said as she found a place against the counter for herself and matched Steve’s pose.

“I was already here,” Steve said. “Tony called me.”

It was almost an audible _snap_ in her mind, that switch from _on edge_ to _high alert_ , although she was sure she gave no outward sign of it. “Something happened.”

Steve inclined his head. “Thor sounded the alarm.”

“About what?”

“About _him_.” He jabbed a finger at Loki.

A series of emotions flickered across Loki’s face almost too quickly for Natasha to follow, but she caught confusion, annoyance, and dismay before he finally settled on resentment.

“Did he tell you,” Loki said through gritted teeth, “that I was not keen on coming here?” He stood, scraping the chair across the floor, and gripped the table edge as his expression grew stormy. “That I tried to argue the intelligence of bringing me to Earth after the damage I had wrought? That I suggested no less than half a dozen alternatives as we traversed the—”

“But he _did_ bring you here,” Steve said evenly. “And apparently there were conditions—”

“Chains,” Loki snarled.

“—that you didn’t follow. You disappeared for weeks; you managed to hide yourself from Heimdall and Dr. Strange.”

“Who?” Natasha asked.

“The gatekeeper of Asgard,” Steve answered, “and—”

“A second-rate, pathetic _sham_ of a sorcerer,” Loki said.

He was staring into nothing, white-knuckling the table like it was the only thing keeping him from violence. His eyes were… _feral_ was the first word that popped into Natasha’s head, and getting more so by the second.

 _He’s cracking open again_ , she thought, and wondered at the suddenness, at the cause of it. Because they were suspicious of him? Because Thor was?

“I was searching,” Loki hissed. “Questioning. Gathering information that might be of use to you ridiculously simpleminded creatures—”

While Steve watched him silently, incredulity at Loki’s outburst veering rapidly toward alarm, Natasha shifted her stance and reached for the gun tucked into the back of her jeans, hidden beneath her leather jacket, just in case.

“Sit down, Loki,” she told him, and for as calm and unconcerned as her tone was, she knew Loki would sense the steel in it.

He went silent, dropping his head like his strings had been cut, and stood there for a long moment, a barely visible tremor traveling from his shoulders down his arms. Then, with a growl, he let go of the kitchen table, jerked the chair back into place, and sat.

“Thank you,” Natasha said mildly, as though Steve’s wide-eyed expression wasn’t screaming _What the hell was that?_ “Now, tell Steve everything you told me. Everything you say you’ve spent the last few weeks learning.”

Red-faced, still not looking directly at either of them, Loki gritted his teeth and sniffed. Just as Natasha began to think he’d refuse to cooperate, he finally opened his mouth and, in a cool brittle voice, started to speak.

It was more eloquent, more organized that the halting confession he’d given her, and she wondered if he’d been rehearsing in his head. He told them about falling into the abyss, how he was discovered and transported into the Chitauri Space by Thanos, a Titan and one of the most feared warlords in the universe. How Thanos commanded that Loki retrieve the Tesseract from Earth, warning him that he’d be punished severely if he failed.

Loki said, as he’d told Natasha earlier, that he didn’t know about the Infinity Stones, about the true power of the Tesseract, until much later, when he was solely concerned with saving his own hide after his failure. That at least two stones were on Earth—in Vision, as Steve and Natasha knew, and with Loki himself—and that Thanos would come for them.

When Loki offered up the Tesseract, held out the glowing blue cube for Steve to take, his hand shook slightly, and he looked like he’d swallowed something foul.

He didn’t want to give it up; as he’d told Natasha, it was his backup plan, the only leverage he had against Thanos. That he was doing it anyway, following her orders to a T, pleased her more than she wanted to admit.

“And now you’re here,” Steve said, grasping the Tesseract loosely in both hands, “telling us all this…because?”

Loki’s lip curled. “Isn’t it obvious?” He sat forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Because my oaf of a brother unknowingly brought all of Asgard to a realm that is already in the Mad Titan’s sights. He will certainly find me if I am here. Even if I flee, if I continue to hide, soon, with the help of the Infinity Stones, he will find me wherever I am. That I’ve managed to delay the inevitable thus far is nothing short of a miracle, really. And when he has me, his wrath…” He laughed, and the sound was so dark, so ragged, it sent a chill up Natasha’s spine. “Well. You and your team of dysfunctional mortals are my best hope, such that it is.”

“So, you want to save your own skin,” Steve said. “That’s it? That’s your whole motivation?”

Loki cocked his head to one side. “Would you trust me if it were anything else?”

They stared at each other, sizing each other up, and Natasha let them. Judging the threat of violence to be minimal, she let go of her gun and crossed her arms again, waiting for one of them to make their next move.

It was Steve who broke the silence. “I want to talk to Natasha alone.”

She blinked, surprised. She’d expected more back-and-forth. Maybe not a full interrogation, but at least closer to it than this.

Judging by Loki’s thinned lips, the wary glint in his eye, he’d expected the same. Nevertheless, he scooted his chair and stood from the table. Some of the feral-ness had left his expression, and he was no longer holding himself so rigidly, tense enough to shatter.

But there was still _something_ there. When he adjusted his suit jacket and lengthened his spine, standing tall, Natasha had a sudden, gruesome image of a body being quartered, stretching and stretching and stretching just before it broke.

“Of course,” Loki said. “I’ll just…spend some time getting reacquainted with the balcony, shall I?”

Which just reminded Natasha of when he’d surprised her here in the middle of the night, how he’d been injured and not well, how she never had gotten an answer from him about what had hurt him.

Steve raised an eyebrow at _reacquainted_ and stared at her pointedly while Loki opened the door to the balcony and showed himself out. If he noticed or cared that he was walking right into a spitting rain, he didn’t give any indication.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Natasha said, “He wasn’t going to tell any of us about the Tesseract. I had to force it out of him.” There was no use keeping that quiet. If his reluctance got out later, it would just make Loki—and her, by extension—look worse.

Steve sighed. “Of course he wasn’t.” He lifted the cube and turned it slowly from side to side. “Are we sure this is even the real Tesseract? Not a fake?”

“Did you see his face when he gave it up? It’s real.”

“Are you forgetting that he’s a skilled manipulator? A liar?”

“So am I,” she said. “And Loki wouldn’t lie in a way that made him look weak.”

Steve set the Tesseract on the counter and turned to her, looking her right in the eyes. She looked back, hiding nothing. Maybe this was where the interrogation started. Which was just as well—she knew she’d be under suspicion too, if not as much as Loki.

“When did this start?” he asked. “With him, that is.”

She shrugged. “A month, a month and a half maybe, give or take. I was in Brussels, and he just showed up. I caught sight of him outside a café, but he was gone before I could do anything. Then he kept…popping in, basically. Baiting me, trying to start little hand-to-hand fights.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Who? You? You had other things to worry about, so I decided to handle it on my own. There was something…” She gestured vaguely with one hand, searching for the words. “Off about him. Even for Loki. He wasn’t attacking me or trying to beat me. If anything, _he_ wanted to be beaten.”

She mentally acknowledged the double entendre there but decided to skip over that part. She still hadn’t fully reconciled her decision to be the sadistic Domme to Loki’s masochistic sub with herself, so she wasn’t keen to take the issue up with Steve.

“Then when he told me all of this…” Another gesture, this time encompassing the whole room. “I started to wonder if he was just looking for someone to trust him.”

“And do you?” Steve asked. “Trust him?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

“I think,” Natasha said carefully, “that he’s genuinely afraid of what Thanos will do to him, and that he does believe we’re his best hope for survival. For now, at least. And as long as he continues to believe that…” She paused, tasting the words in her mouth, judging the truth of them, weighing what her instincts were saying against what her head was. “Then yeah, I think he could be an asset. If he stops believing in us or he finds something better…”

She didn’t bother saying anything more, and Steve nodded.

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement,” he said, “but under the circumstances, I guess I can’t really ask for anything else. How about this: do you think people can change?”

The wording wasn’t the most precise, but she knew what he meant. It seemed an even more loaded, difficult question that the last, if that was possible. In the end, she gave the only answer she felt confident in.

“ _I_ did.”

Steve smiled at her, and it was Captain America through and through. The sort of smile you wanted to trust, the sort of smile that tried so hard to make you believe everything would be okay and nothing would hurt.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “You did. And it’s…it’s stuff like that that makes me believe it is possible. That anyone can change, no matter who they are or…or what they’ve done.”

There was a wistfulness, a heaviness to his tone that made her suspect Steve wasn’t just thinking of her crimes or Loki’s, but she said nothing.

She glanced out the window, where she could see that Loki had made himself at home on her balcony the same way he had before. Sitting on the railing, his head tipped up. She couldn’t see but assumed his eyes were closed and he was letting the raindrops fall on his face.

Steve looked over his shoulder, following her gaze. “You care about him.”

Natasha didn’t even try to hide her surprise.

“Not a lot, maybe,” he amended. “But enough.”

She grimaced, turning the comment over and over in her mind like a stone. “‘Care’ is—” _An oversimplification. A mistake. An even deeper mess that I don’t need._ “—a strong word,” she decided. “He came to me, specifically, so I guess I feel…responsible for him, in a way.” She remembered Loki kneeling on her floor in Bulgaria, rubbing her feet, glowing when she’d said he was doing a good job. “I think I’m starting to understand him, what he wants, the way he thinks.” She nearly stopped there, but in a show of honesty she wouldn’t give anyone else, she added, “More than I’m comfortable with, actually.”

He watched her for a moment, glanced at Loki again—who hadn’t so much as twitched despite the rain beginning to fall more heavily now—and said, “You’re a good person. I know you don’t think you are, and not everyone sees it, but…you are.” Another Captain America smile, this one slightly softer than the last. “And I trust in that, even if I don’t trust him.”

It wasn’t what she wanted by any means. She’d hoped for some sort of confirmation that she hadn’t misjudged, hadn’t been deceived, hadn’t lost herself. Yet, somehow, she felt reassured anyway. Confident. Prepared.

They should call Loki back in, figure out their plan, but there was something she wanted to know first.

“You haven’t been in Wakanda.”

He blinked, visibly taken aback. “How do you know that?”

Natasha shrugged one shoulder. “Just a feeling. Where’s Sam?”

“Um. By now—” Steve glanced around—searching for the time, she realized after a moment—but the only clock in the kitchen was the one on the microwave, which was blinking 12:00. “Well, I guess he’s probably made it to Wakanda.”

“So Sam’s there. But not you.”

“I left a while ago,” Steve said. “I’d overstayed my welcome. It took me too long to realize the people of Wakanda have more important things to do than take care of a soldier with no home and no purpose. And Bucky is…I mean, he’s okay, but—”

“He’s awake?”

“Awake, deprogrammed, whatever you want to call it, but he’s…” He moved so he was leaning back against the counter again, looking everywhere but at Natasha. “That’s why Sam’s there now. He used to do sessions for veterans with PTSD, and…” He paused, pressing his lips together. “Well. Some things even the best technology alone can’t fix, you know?”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. She touched his shoulder, trying to show that she understood, that she was here, that she was sorry it hadn’t been as easy as he’d expected.

“I guess the problem isn’t so much whether people will change, but…whether they change in the way you hoped.” He sighed, seemed to wrestle silently with something for a few seconds, and then continued. “I’ll talk to Tony, try to get him on board. It’ll be a hard sell, but…”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of Tony. I can handle him.”

“It’s not about that; it’s about timing. You should take Loki and go talk to Thor.”

“What, visit him? In Norway?” she asked, incredulous. “Where national news crews are permanently camped out, looking for stories on the ‘alien refugee crisis’? You want _me_ parading _Loki_ in front of them?”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “Okay, point taken.” He tipped his head back, peering thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Hm. You know what… I’ll get back to you on that.”

 

* * *

 

The questioning continued after Loki came back inside, but this time it was about practical, tactical issues. What the Infinity Stones would make Thanos capable of, what sort of weapons Thanos had at his disposal, the status of the Chitauri. Most of which Loki only had vague, non-answers for, and Steve seemed frustrated but understanding.

Before Steve left, he pulled Natasha into the hallway outside the apartment and said, in an undertone, “Just…be careful with him, all right? I’ll talk to you later tonight. If anything happens, even if you think you can handle it, you call me. Promise me.”

“I will,” she said, and then he was gone.

She went back into the apartment. Loki was still in the kitchen, sitting at the table.

“Do you know,” he said musingly, “I don’t think he likes me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

Natasha took a seat in the chair across from Loki and scrutinized him. The rain outside had dampened both his hair and his clothes, but they were drying out now. His suit looked rumpled, and his hair was frizzy and beginning to curl at the ends. His eyes darted from one corner of the room to the other, and as she watched, he started to make indistinct shapes on the table with his fingers.

 _Not good signs_ , she thought.

“You didn’t tell me Thor gave you rules to follow when he brought you to Earth,” she said.

That irritated him. His jaw clenched, and his fingers moved more rapidly. “He presented them as requests, not rules. He was… _smiling_ when we discussed it. I should have realized. Odin always casted his disappointments aside, but Thor was so thick-headed that he required his to be right in front of him. So he wouldn’t forget to _learn_ from them.”

Fury darkened his voice, and Natasha cocked her head, peering at him even harder. “Why do you have so many issues with Thor?”

Loki’s smile was as savage as a dagger. “Ah, of course. How could I forget you’re one of his many, many friends? Doubtless you cannot possibly imagine how anyone could find fault with such greatness.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said wryly. “I can see plenty of faults, but none are so horrible that they explain why you get so rattled when someone calls him your brother.”

His hands curled into fists. “He’s not my brother.”

“Because you were adopted.”

After a moment of thick, heavy silence, he sat back in his chair and grinned, toothless but sharklike. “Surely there are more interesting topics. Your own siblings, for instance, or—”

“I don’t have any,” she said. “Which you know. Clint told you everything about me, remember? You know more about my past than most people ever will, but I know nothing about yours. So tell me, Loki. What was it like growing up with Thor?”

He wasn’t going to answer. She could see it in his face, the pinched and defiant expression of someone who would sooner swallow his own tongue than speak. Then he seemed to change his mind—either that, or the words needed to come out more than he wanted to keep them in.

“He was arrogant,” Loki said. “Bullheaded. Impulsive. No talent outside of a battlefield or a mead hall, no desire to do anything with his golden existence aside from boast and drink and kill and fuck. And yet _he_ was to be king.”

He was flushed when he finished, breathing heavily, and he had that terrible, manic look in his eye that she was beginning to know quite well.

She toyed with the idea of baiting him, pushing him further, but it seemed too cruel. Not about this, a bitterness he’d probably been nurturing for centuries.

“Does he have a cell phone?” she asked instead, remembering Steve’s suggestion. “Or anything I could use to get in touch with him, tell him what’s going on?”

Loki snorted but said nothing, which was as much of a confirmation as she needed. She hadn’t been counting on it anyway.

“All right,” she said, “so do you need to…I don’t know, go back? Or bring him here? Let him know where you’ve been?”

His expression became downright vicious, his lips twisting into a snarl. “He may think himself my keeper, but that does not make it so.”

“You destroyed New York,” Natasha reminded him dryly. “Along with whatever else you did afterward. You don’t get to be offended when people don’t trust you anymore.”

She expected anger but not the sheer rage that followed. He let out a growl and slammed one fist on the table, splitting the wood. The loud _crack_ startled her, made her jerk backward.

He followed, shooting up out of his chair and bending over the broken table, practically spitting into her face. “And you’re so innocent, aren’t you? So untarnished. You sit there, provoking me, because you can’t stand the ugliness of your own—”

Natasha grabbed one of his frizzy, still-damp curls, twisted it around her hand, and pulled until he shouted and reached for her wrist. His knees buckled, sending him to the floor with only her grip keeping him upright.

“No,” she said. “Fix that.” She jabbed her chin toward the crack in her kitchen table. “Right now. You want to hate yourself and blame it on everyone else? Fine. Wreck everything in your life, Loki, but the key word there is _your_. You come into my world, my life—”

He began to shimmer gold, and without thinking, she yanked his hair harder, managing to wrench a few strands free and making him hiss in pain. The shimmer vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“I don’t think so,” she snapped. “You don’t break my things and run. You came to me, you made this my business—”

She stopped, realizing that he was still clutching her wrist but not fighting her, not trying to break free, not even trying to move to minimize the pain his scalp must’ve been feeling. She licked her lips, recalculating her read of the entire situation.

“Do you want me to hit you?” she asked.

He gazed up at her. Everything in his eyes, the slant of his lips, the upward tilt of his chin, all of it said _Please_ , and the last dregs of indignation bled out of her.

“Follow me,” she said.

She tugged gently on his hair, stood, and he fell onto his forearms and crawled after her, trailing her into the living room and right in front of the sofa, where she stopped.

“Remember the last time I dragged you around by your hair?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Remember the position I put you in and made you hold? Get into it now, facing this way.”

He didn’t need the assistance that she thought he would, and arranged himself perfectly: his ass in the air, knees bent and his toes pointed to the ceiling, his upper body sloping toward the floor, and his forehead pillowed on his folded arms. With a flash of amusement, Natasha wondered if he’d been practicing.

“Good,” she whispered, and bent to touch his hair, breaking up one of his curls with her fingers. She heard the catch in his breath and nearly smiled. “Stay there.”

She went back into the kitchen and got a glass from the cabinet. It looked a little grimy, with white spots near the rim, so she washed it in the sink first before she filled it with tap water. Then, while she drank, she stood with her back against the counter, nearly the same place Steve had occupied before, and watched the rain, listening to it drum against the window, the roof, the balcony. She thought about her _ugliness_ , as Loki had called it.

She never thought about the Red Room. She avoided all those years with the efficiency of a surgeon avoiding a major artery. She didn’t even have to struggle to bury the memories. Obviously they were still in there somewhere—Wanda wouldn’t have been able to use them if they weren’t—but she didn’t _feel_ them. Not really. Just as she didn’t feel the hair on her nape unless she tried or didn’t feel her lungs expanding with each breath unless she focused on the sensation.

They were part of her. They _were_ her, so ingrained it was pointless to remember, to scrutinize, to analyze.

She wondered if it was like that for Loki. If his animosity toward Thor, his animosity toward _everything_ , it seemed, had become so innate that to put it to rest, to learn to live without it, was an impossibility. Maybe he just needed something else to cover it.

Natasha refilled the glass and took it to the living room. She found Loki nude and still in position, although he’d sagged a bit and was shaking slightly.

“I didn’t tell you to take your clothes off,” she said, approaching him.

His voice was muffled and strained when he answered. “I was merely being proactive. Now you needn’t order me to do so at all because it’s already done.”

“Presumptuous of you. You might not like where that gets you.” She squatted in front of him. “You can come out of that pose, but stay down. Hands and knees.”

He looked smug as he moved, despite his pink face and disheveled hair, as though he thought he’d passed some sort of test of hers or perhaps outsmarted her. When he was more or less where she wanted him, she put one hand under his chin and used the other to bring the glass to his lips.

“It’s just water,” she said, seeing the sudden gleam of wariness in his eyes. “Drink.”

She tipped the cool liquid into his mouth slowly, probably too slowly, but she didn’t want him to choke. As he drank, she relocated her hand from his chin to his throat, bracketing it with her fingers and feeling him swallow under her palm. His eyelids fluttered shut.

When she thought he’d had enough, she set the glass aside with about an inch of water still left in it. She cupped his jaw, stroked his cheeks tenderly, until he opened his eyes again and looked at her. The wildness in them was gone, replaced with a sort of hazy anticipation.

 _I wonder_ , she thought.

“You have lovely eyes,” she said, keeping her tone blank. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”

His eyebrows knitted together, and his lips turned down. “I… I thought you were going to hit me.” He sounded lost.

“No. I asked if you wanted me to. Question, not an offer.” Natasha dropped her hands and sat back. “I’ve been doing it so much lately. I’m bored of it.”

She fixed his posture, making his back as straight and flat as a table. He still looked confused, adrift, but she said nothing as she picked up the glass and returned to the kitchen. She refilled it with water and carried it back to the living room, where she set it on his back, right in the center. A ripple passed through his muscles—shock from the cold on his bare skin, she suspected—and then subsided.

She waited a few seconds to see if he faltered or protested, but he remained steady and silent, waiting. “Keep that there,” she said. “If you spill even a drop of that water, I won’t touch you for the rest of the day. Understand?”

When he said nothing, she knelt and stared into his face. He stared back almost defiantly. Confusion had given way to frustration.

“I’m in charge here,” she reminded him solemnly. “Not you. Don’t forget that.”

She stood before he could respond, in words or facial expressions. She’d dropped her bags by the front door when they’d arrived, and she picked them up now and carried them into the bedroom. They’d stay here tonight, she decided. After all, there was nothing else to do until she heard from Steve.

At that thought, she pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. No messages or calls, and it was just past three.

She needed to call Clint, she knew. He needed to hear it from her—all of it, not the kinky details but more than she’d told Steve. After all he’d done for her, all he’d trusted her with, he deserved at least that much of her honesty.

 _Later_ , she promised herself.

When Natasha returned to the living room, Loki’s back had dipped very, very slightly but not enough to upset the glass’s balance.

“How are you doing?” she asked, snatching up the glass to take a sip.

He swiveled his head in her direction and arched an eyebrow. “Humans find this difficult?”

 _Hm. Not yet_ , she thought. “Depends on the human. But it’s not meant to be difficult for you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She took another, larger sip and fixed his back—he’d overarched it in the last few seconds, overcompensating—before she set the glass down, closer to his lower back this time.

“What am I meant to be doing?” he said.

She could hear his gritted teeth and almost smiled. “Staying like that, not spilling any water.” She peeled off her jacket and debated kicking her shoes off but left them on.

“And you derive some sort of pleasure from putting me on my hands and knees and laying things on me?”

“I thought that was obvious, yeah.” She sat on the sofa, lifted her legs, and—slowly, gingerly, not wanting to risk dumping the water herself—rested her heels on Loki’s back near his shoulder blades.

His quiet “oof” and the way his body wobbled under the extra weight said he hadn’t expected that, but he got himself under control easily enough. Smirking, she set her elbow on the armrest and propped her cheek on her hand. She wished she could see his face, but his hair was dangling in front of it, blocking her view.

“Is it so hard to imagine why I’m getting a thrill out of this?” she asked. “You thought you were powerful enough that you could conquer my planet, and now you’re my footstool.”

It was a risk. It could’ve leaned too heavy on the humiliation, enough to pull him out of his just-going-along-with-it mindset. But as she waited and he said nothing, even dropped his head like he’d accepted his position, she knew she’d played it perfectly.

Relishing the hum of satisfaction, she leaned back into the couch, closed her eyes, and breathed.

She wondered how long they had until Thanos came. Why he hadn’t come already. Why he’d bothered to send someone else to do his dirty work in the first place.

Eventually, though, she couldn’t think any more about that. There were too many unknowns, and Loki was a distraction, his every breath lifting and lowering her feet, the tremors that started when his body—strong and godlike though it was—eventually grew tired. She pondered what she would do to him after this, remembered all the things she’d already put him through. Her fists, her riding crop, her cock, her needles…

She’d never asked him how he’d felt about the needle play. He’d dropped badly afterward, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t enjoyed it in the moment. He’d seemed to. He always seemed to. He took everything she gave, even when he didn’t understand it, like now, and he kept coming back for more.

She opened her eyes. Loki was struggling, shaking, sweat glistening on his back, and his spine curving so much the glass was one gasp away from tipping over. Immediately, she lowered her feet to the floor and picked up the glass, and he groaned like the loss hurt worse than the weight.

“Perfect,” she told him sweetly. “You did better than I thought. Come here.”

Although he was wobbly, his forearms weak, he closed the short distance between them and settled on the floor in front of the sofa, between her open thighs, blinking up at her almost groggily.

“Such lovely eyes,” she said.

This time there was no confusion at the compliment, only Loki sitting up straighter, his cheeks flushing with pleasure. _Because he’s…earned it?_ she wondered. _Suffered for it?_ Something to pay closer attention to.

She had him drink a few swallows of water before she put the glass on the floor, resting her hand on his shoulder as she did. When she eased back into her seat, still touching him, he moved with her. She didn’t quite know how it happened, but suddenly he was bent forward into the V of her thighs, so close to her groin. His mouth opened, eyes sliding shut. Perhaps he could smell her. She didn’t doubt that she was wet, musky.

Natasha hesitated, weighing the pros and cons, and eventually decided that he’d earned it. She scooted her hips and folded him forward until his face was pressed against the zipper of her jeans. His moan was blissful, if weak, and he laid his hands lightly, tentatively, on the outsides of her thighs.

“What have you done to me?” he said, sounding stricken, bruised, and although the rumble of his voice made her want to squirm, she frowned.

She didn’t know the answer to that. It wasn’t like she had a plan, aside from whatever seemed right at any given time, but she was loath to admit that. So she petted his hair, distracting him. He arched into her touch like a cat, so soft now, so pliable. An effect of the discomfort or the humiliation or both?

“You did good today,” she said. “With Steve, with the water.”

Angling his head back, he grinned, some of the harshness, the not-quite-genuine pride seeping back into his expression. “In that case, surely I deserve a reward.”

Since that had been where she was going anyway, she agreed. “You can have either my crop on your ass or my cock _in_ it. Your choice.”

He only stared at her, his mouth going small and tight—which was as good as a verbal response, really. He wanted the option he couldn’t bring himself to speak. She could have been cruel, and nearly was, but she had pity on him instead. Men on Earth could be weird about wanting to get fucked; she wouldn’t be surprised if men of Asgard were the same, or worse.

“My cock it is, then,” she said, and his shoulders slumped with relief.

“You moved your bag of tricks to the bedroom.” His voice was breathy already with how much he wanted it. She wondered how he lived like this, so intent to deny everything he craved—everything he was.

“I did.” She smiled. “Let’s go.”

He was even more wobbly on his feet. She tried to help steady him, but he tore himself away with a huff. “A keeper and now a crutch,” he muttered. “What else will I be saddled with in this wretched place?”

 _So much for softness_ , she thought, giving him space and letting him hobble himself down the hallway—so short it barely even constituted such a thing—and into the bedroom. The bags were piled on the floor, and as Loki climbed onto the bed, Natasha dove into one, searching for what she had in mind. She skipped over the double-ended dildo in favor of a traditional one plus a harness. When she stood with the two pieces in hand, Loki’s mouth turned down.

“Ah,” he said. “I thought—” He didn’t seem to know how to finish.

“I know what you thought. You were wrong.”

Natasha slotted the dildo—indigo and decently sized, big for a person but average for a toy—into place in the leather harness and strapped it on over her jeans. When she glanced at him again, he seemed to have gotten over his disappointment, staring at the toy with his lips parted, his legs already starting to inch wider. She hadn’t been paying much attention to his dick before, but it was easy to see now that it was hard and standing proud.

Smirking, she squatted down and rummaged again in her duffel before coming up with a pair of disposable gloves, a bottle of lube, and a condom.

“I don’t need it,” Loki said.

She blinked. “Which one?”

He scowled. “Lubrication.”

“Oh yeah? Is your ass self-lubricating? I must’ve missed that last time.”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t be absurd. I’m—” He licked his lips, squinting as though he’d lost the words. “I don’t—”

“You don’t mind a little pain,” Natasha said evenly, thinking _Why am I not surprised?_

“Yes. Precisely.”

“No.”

Loki bared his teeth. “I beg your pardon?”

She shrugged, coming closer. “I can do minimal prep. No fingering or stretching. But I won’t do no lube.”

“Why?” he spat.

 _Because I know a small minority of the population_ do _enjoy it for totally non-self-destruction reasons, but from what I’ve seen today, I’m not sure you’re one of them. And you’re not going to play me like that._ She suspected he wouldn’t take that well, though, so she said breezily, “You’re not in the position to question me right now. Those are my conditions. Take it or leave it.”

When he hesitated, lips pursing like he might try to argue, she continued. “I’m perfectly fine locking you out and fucking myself with this thing if that’s how you want to play this.”

That got her an overly bright, winsome smile. “If I agree to your conditions, will you fuck yourself after you fuck me?”

“Loki.”

He sighed heavily, scooting farther up the bed, near the pillows. “ _Fine_. If I must. How would you prefer me?”

She didn’t even have to consider. “Just like last time.”

He got on his hands and knees, his legs spread, and she climbed onto the bed behind him. She dropped the gloves to the mattress, keeping them within reach just in case, then ripped open the foil wrapper and rolled the condom on the dildo. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Loki had lowered his head to the pillow, turned it to the side, and was watching her. She glanced at him full-on, and although he sneered at her, his face pinked like he was embarrassed to be caught.

“Surely you don’t require assistance,” he said. “You managed just fine on your own last time.”

“Just making sure you’re okay.” She snapped open the bottle and drizzled its contents down the dildo’s length. Then she spread the lube along the condom with her fingers. “Your joints aren’t sore or anything, are they?”

Loki made a low, throaty sound and turned his face into the pillow.

“What was that?” she asked, walking forward on her knees. Hands on either of his ass cheeks, she nudged them apart, baring his wrinkled, hairless hole.

“I’m fine,” he growled. “Get on with it.”

She contemplated teasing him, realized he probably expected it, and then just pushed inside. He opened easily, taking the full head of the toy like she’d spent ages preparing him for it. With a muffled cry, he thrust back, trying to take it deeper. Her first impulse was to slap his hip and stop him, but she allowed it instead, wanting to see how far and how quickly he’d go.

 _All the way_ and _swiftly_ was the answer. Each inch of the dildo disappeared inside his asshole, stretching it wider and wider, like he’d been born for this, and he made ardent, blissful sounds that she suspected were words but not in a language she was familiar with.

“Impatient, aren’t you?” she crooned. “Can’t wait for me to give it to you. You have to take it all yourself.”

He shuddered but grew still, his ass cheeks pressing into the harness.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Natasha rested a hand in the small of his back, loving the needy little dip in his spine that lifted his ass high, making it as accessible as possible. “You wanted my cock. Now fuck it.”

He hissed and looked over his shoulder with an expression that might’ve been intended as a glare, but with his eyes half-lidded and glassy, he just looked sex-drugged. “I despise you.”

She smirked. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

“So I was your footstool,” he said, his tone too flat for her to read, “and now I’m your whore?”

She hesitated for less than a second before she went with the first thing that came to her head. “I think you like being a whore more than a footstool.”

He said nothing, but his inhale was shaky—the good kind, she thought—as he turned his face back into the pillow. He rocked his hips, letting a few inches of the toy slip out before he impaled himself again.

“That’s it,” she said, stroking his side. “Show me how good you can be.”

Whatever self-consciousness or shame that had been holding him back dissipated soon enough, and he was pounding himself back onto the strap-on with enough force that Natasha’s pelvis began to ache. But that was a minor concern, secondary to Loki’s whimpers and whines and the throb of her clit in her jeans. There wasn’t enough friction to get her off—there never was with a strap-on, at least for her—but it didn’t matter. The knowledge and sight and sound of Loki fucking himself, debasing himself, a whore just for her, was enough.

When his cries pitched higher, taking on an edge of desperation, she finally gave in, bent forward with both hands gripping his hips, and took over, driving into him as hard and fast as she could.

He writhed and wailed and said, “Please.”

 _No prompting_ , she thought with an exhilarated grin. _Don’t tell me I’ve_ already _got him trained._

“Please,” he keened. “Please. Natasha. Please, anything.”

She laughed, breathless. “Anything? Sure about that?”

“Uhnn!”

He was already tensing, limbs beginning to quiver, when she reached around and grasped his cock, which was wet and so, so hard. She stroked it once, twice, and when she felt him start to come, she promptly let go and gripped his hip even harder.

“Nnnn,” he said, but the _O_ never followed. He simply let it happen, his cock no doubt leaking onto the bed without the pleasure of the orgasm, and in that moment she thought nothing had ever been hotter. Her chest felt tight and her clit ached, and she wanted things she knew she shouldn’t want. Not from Loki.

He was still trembling and moaning from his ruined orgasm when he slumped flat on the bed. “Sadist,” he said weakly.

“We’ve already covered this.” She pulled the dildo out, gently holding the condom in place. “I did tell you that you shouldn’t have been presumptuous, didn’t I?”

As she scooted backward, giving him space, he rolled over onto his back. His cock was still hard, although he had dribbles of come drying along the length. She knee-walked to the head of the bed so she could lie next to him, loosening the harness but keeping it in place. While she unzipped her jeans and slipped a hand inside, Loki turned onto his side and lifted himself to his elbow, watching her hungrily, giving her an idea.

“Here,” she said, circling the base of the dildo with her free hand. “Suck.”

He didn’t hesitate, not at the order nor even at the fact that the condom was still in place. He crawled until he was between her spread thighs, and then he sucked the strap-on into his mouth. He took it all, every inch, his nose mashing against the leather of the harness, although it made him gag twice—the second time so violently Natasha felt a splinter of concern—before he settled.

She touched herself while he bobbed his head, moaning around the cock in his mouth, his saliva dribbling down the length.

Suddenly he tore himself away. “You’re so wet,” he said, nearly snarling. “I can smell it. I can _hear it_.” He rested his cheek on her thigh, eyes squeezed shut, and his tone was soft, pleading. “Damn you. Why won’t you let me—”

“Because I like you like this.” She rubbed her clit harder, gasping as it throbbed so sweetly. Why was this so good, making Loki want her so badly he hurt with it and then denying him? “Because I want you like this. And I’m in charge, aren’t I?”

His eyes opened, so green and lovely. “Yes,” he said, sounding solemn, heartfelt, and she came just like that.

Once the first few waves passed, she slipped a finger inside to give her cunt something to clench around, and she kept it there, hitching her hips occasionally when a spasm seemed to invite it. Loki watched her the whole time, and there was a heaviness to his expression that she couldn’t interpret.

“What are you doing to me?” he said.

She caught the tense change—it was _doing_ now, not _have done_ —and wondered at it. What _was_ she doing to him? What did she want to do? Or, perhaps more crucially, what he did want her to do?

She eased her hand out of her jeans. “I think,” she said, measuring her words carefully, “you want someone to see you. To value you. Don’t you?”

He jerked back, his face twisting, and she grabbed him by the neck and kept him from withdrawing completely.

“You—” he began furiously.

She cut him off. “That’s what I’m doing. I’m making you into something worth valuing.”

Loki’s laugh was ugly, dulled, like a badly rusted blade. “Quite a feat. I fear you may be centuries too late for that.”

It was a distinct possibility, so she only said, “We’ll see,” as she let him go.

She saw that her fingers were still glistening with her own wetness at the same time that Loki seemed to realize it as well, and when she brushed them against his lips, he opened for them without a word. He suckled gently, sighing through his nose as she stroked his hair with her opposite hand.

They needed to eat dinner soon, since they hadn’t had lunch, but Natasha would give him a while to come down first.

“You’re going to fix my table, right?” she said.

Loki drew back, her fingers slipping free with a _pop_ , and lay his head on her thigh. “I already did.”


End file.
